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Category Archives: First Amendment

Trump’s team cites First Amendment in contesting election interference charges – Southernminn.com

Posted: March 29, 2024 at 2:47 am

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Trump's team cites First Amendment in contesting election interference charges - Southernminn.com

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Trump’s team cites First Amendment in contesting charges in Georgia election interference case – messenger-inquirer

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OPINION: The possible TikTok ban is an infringement on our First Amendment rights – The Suffolk Journal

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The new bill to ban TikTok infringes on the First Amendment right to have freedom of speech.

TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps in the U.S. today. The app is a place where people can make short videos and build a community; it has also become home to many small businesses and influencers who have made a following on the app.

TikTok also has a strong hold on American culture with over 143.4 million active users on the app every month. This is the most number of users on the app in the world per country according to a study done by Statista in October 2023.

The proposed TikTok ban gives Bytedance, a China-based company and the owners of TikTok, approximately six months to divest TikToks U.S. assets to keep the app accessible to U.S. users..

Lawmakers proposed this ban as there is reason to believe that the company Bytedance would have to follow Chinese security laws and divulge American data if it were to be requested by the Chinese government. Another concern raised has been the influence and effect on Americans as a whole.

So, lawmakers have data concerns and worry that China would be able to get the information purely based on the fact that TikTok is owned by a Chinese company and must obey its laws.

If Bytedance doesnt sell the company then it would become illegal for app stores including Apple and Google to offer the app, cutting off millions of users. This would be detrimental to the free speech that users deserve to have and will create a precedent that is harmful to American society.

People deserve to have their voices heard on social media and deserve to post the content they wish.

This is especially important when looking at how popular the app has become with people and businesses.

Ultimately, this decision is selfish, especially when considering the fact that other hearings regarding TikTok have shown that the CEO Shou Zi Chew is making an effort to prove that Bytedance is willing to protect American data. TikTok has even gone so far as to post its own response video to the bill explaining how data is handled in the United States.

We have never even banned an application nationally in the United States before, at least not a foreign-based application. It would be an abuse of power from the government that should alarm everyone, whether or not you are an active TikTok user.

We have seen TikTok banned before, specifically in Texas. This ban was limited to only government devices. This does not infringe upon First Amendment rights as it is a security risk to the government and they are civil servants. It is a completely different story when looking at a nationwide ban as it is not limited to only government officials, but targeted at everyone.

This act would be the complete opposite of what the American people expect from their government, especially since they are meant to protect our freedoms and follow the Constitution.

I expect, and hope, that even though the House passed the bill, that the Senate will recognize this as the abuse of power that it is and its dangerous infringement of the First Amendment.

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Abridging, Not Coercing, Is The First Amendment’s Yardstick for Speech Violations – Reason

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Philip Hamburger, a professor at Columbia, is the CEO of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which represents most of the individual plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri.

Hamburger wrote the following post in response to a post at Volokh by Ilya Somin:

Is coercion the First Amendment's measure of the freedom of speech? In commenting on Murthy v. Missouri, Prof. Ilya Somin takes the view that "coercion is the appropriate standard." To this he merely adds that "veiled, but credible threats of retaliation by government officials qualify as such coercion."

So far does he take this emphasis on coercion that, from his perspective, there is no First Amendment violation even when the government uses "significant encouragement" to get the private party to concede "active control" over its speech decisions. In the absence of coercion (including credible threats of retaliation) he apparently sees no limit on the power government can exercise over speech if it gets consent.

The First Amendment, however, has something to say about coercion. Prof. Somin recognizes the argument I make in Courting Censorship, that the First Amendment bars government from "abridging" the freedom of speech, and thus bars reducing that freedom. But he fails to note that the amendment also bars government from "prohibiting" the free exercise of religion. The amendment's contrasting uses of abridging and prohibiting are meaningful. Id, at 254.

The contrast reveals that Prof. Somin's coercion argument misattributes to free speech the standard that the amendment uses for free exercise. The word prohibiting seems to refer to various forms of coercion. So, when the First Amendment instead speaks of abridging the freedom of speech, it would seem to be adopting a different measure of government action for that right. The freedom of speech is violated by a mere reducing of that freedom, whether or not through coercion.

It is therefore unconvincing to suggest that coercion is the measure of freedom of speech. That contradicts the plain meaning of the First Amendment when it contrasts abridging and prohibiting.

Where did Prof. Somin go wrong? He gets to his coercion standard from the word "freedom," arguing that if a private party "cut[s] back on speech voluntarily, the freedom of speech has not been abridged." His theory seems to be that you have not had your freedom abridged if you give consent, and you are acting consensually unless you are coerced. Thus, although the First Amendment's very words make clear that coercion is not the standard for freedom of speech, he reintroduces a coercion standard on the theory that it is the opposite of freedom and consent.

But does it make sense to introduce a coercion standard into a right when the Constitution carefully speaks of it in terms of abridging and contrasts that to prohibiting? Such reasoning defeats the Constitution's words and meaning.

In light of scholarship by Nicholas Rosenkrantz on the Constitution's nouns, it seems time to attend to its verbs. Here, of course, I want to examine abridging and prohibiting.

Some verbs in the Bill of Rights are generic. To say, as in the Second Amendment, that a right shall not be "infringed" is to use a verb that could be used as to any right. But other verbs are specific to particular rightsfor example, the Third Amendment's "quartered." That verb goes far in defining the substance of the particular right.

Tellingly, the verb "abridging" was not generic. For one thing, "it was a familiar locution to speak of abridging the freedom or liberty of speech or the press and to associate this with reducing or restraining the freedom." Courting Censorship, 252. Moreover, that word and its contrast to prohibiting was a self-conscious choice:

The difference in the First Amendment between abridging and prohibiting was deliberate. In July 1789, the draft Bill of Rights contained adjacent paragraphs guaranteeing, in the first, religious rights and, in the second, speech, assembly, and petitioning rightssaying in each that the rights shall not be "infringed." In early September, however, the Senate combined the two paragraphs. The resulting new paragraph barred Congress from making any law "prohibiting" the free exercise of religion or "abridging" the freedom of speech, or the press.

Id, 254. The word abridging was specific to certain rights and evidently was meant to be significant.

So, once again, it is a mistake to conflate the standard for free speech with that for free exercise. Whereas the verb prohibiting requires us to ask about degrees of coercion, the verb abridging demands that we ask whether there has been any reduction in the freedom. It is therefore improbable that the freedom of speech was meant to be measured by coercion.

The Supreme Court's overemphasis on coercion has invited censorship. As I explain in Courting Censorship, the doctrine laid out in Blum and other such cases leaves government confident that it can suppress speech simply by working not too coercively through private parties.

Indeed, much of the current censorship is cooperative:

There is much overlap in the censorship agendas of the government and the Platformsso the government has exerted pressure only at the margins. That pressure is serious enough, for it concerns the material that is most crucial, politically and medically, and because it has suppressed millions of postings.

Id, 246. Thus, there is plenty of coercion, but at the same time the greater bulk of the censorship is not coercive, and thus (from the coercion perspective) seems outside the scope of the First Amendment.

It is clear, however, already from the Supreme Court's cases on unconstitutional conditions that consensual arrangements can violate the First Amendment. In Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, even the meager temptation of a negligible amount of money was understood as prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Although there was not a chance that the church would abandon its faith for the piddling inducement, the Court recognized that the condition in that case came with "indirect coercion." The lesson is that any penalty (even a mere 3 pence tax) on the free exercise of religion amounts to coercing and prohibiting.

Cooperative arrangements are all the more clearly covered when it comes to abridging the freedom of speech, because the relevant government action involves reducing the freedom, not necessarily prohibiting or coercing it. Under this standard, even when the government acts through entirely voluntary cooperation, without even a hint of coercion, it can still be abridging the freedom of speech. Indeed, even to adopt a law or policy reducing the freedom of speech, without any suppressive effects yet, runs afoul of the injunction against making any law abridging the freedom of speech. Courting Censorship, 256-58.

Abridging has the virtue of clarifying that the First Amendment bars all of the current evasions of the Court's coercion model, including the genuinely cooperative arrangements to suppress opinion.

Consider the government's coordination of private censorship.

Even when imposing their own private censorship, the Platforms face a coordination problem. A Platform will sometimes be aiming merely to sanitize its own site by removing opinion it considers distasteful; but it still needs to limit the risk of losing users who seek the suppressed opinion elsewhere. It therefore must coordinate with the other Platforms to make sure they suppress the same sort of opinion. The need for coordination is all the greater when a Platform aims to influence politics or opinion. For that purpose, it needs to ensure that what it suppresses will not appear on another dominant Platformat least not one nearly as large and with substantially overlapping users. Otherwise, its censorship will not effectively shape the public mind.

Although the Platforms therefore often need to coordinate, they cannot do so by themselves without antitrust difficulties. The government solves this problem by offering them coordinationby supplying them with guidance as to what is worthy of suppression, thus allowing the Platforms to align their censorship. Indeed, the government increasingly provides the coordination on a massive scale by subsidizing and working with . . . private censorship and misinformation outfits.

All of this coordination, whether done directly or through cutouts, is a serious abridgement of the freedom of speech. . . .

Id, at 246-47.

Although the word abridging bars evasions, there's also a longstanding constitutional principle that government cannot use private parties to do its dirty work:

In Cummings v. Missourian unconstitutional conditions casethe Court declared that "what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows." In Frost & Frost v. Railroad Commissionanother unconstitutional conditions casethe Court declared: "It is inconceivable that guaranties embedded in the Constitution of the United States may thus be manipulated out of existence." Later, in Norwood v. Harrisonan equal protection case concerning state aid to private schoolsthe Court added that it is "axiomatic" that the government "may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish." Perhaps the most notable expression of such ideas came from Chief Justice John Marshall in Wayman v. Southard: "It is a general rule that what cannot be done directly from defect of power cannot be done indirectly." Together, these admonitions reveal a general principle against evasion, including the evasion accomplished through private parties.

Courting Censorship 247.

Tellingly, the courts have interpreted rights in ways that cut off such evasions. As Eugene Volokh observes, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments are often understood to limit government officers from using consenting private parties to do what the officers cannot. Even the First Amendment is interpreted to block evasionsas evident from cases on unconstitutional conditions.

It's therefore puzzling to read arguments that the government can work through corporate cutouts to suppress the speech of individuals. Even when it's done entirely cooperatively, with full consent from the platforms, it looks like the sort of evasion that doctrine forbids.

One might protest that if the abridging standard reaches even consensual arrangements, it doesn't leave room for government to talk to newspapers about stories that pose a threat to national security. But that assumes that every time the government reduces speech, it is making a law or policy reducing the freedom of speech. The First Amendment expressly avoids that mistake.

It may seem improbable that an eighteenth-century text can offer moderate and helpful guidance for twenty-first century problems. The First Amendment's phrasing, however, is valuable.

First, the First Amendment bars government from abridging the freedom of speech, not just abridging speech. So, it cannot be assumed that every government action reducing speech violates the First Amendment, and this leaves room for government to persuade newspapers or Platforms to drop some speech.

Second, the First Amendment applies to law and, by extension, policy. It thereby permits government to engage in persuasion diminishing speech as long as it does not rise to a law or policy.

These are just summaries of complex points; you can read further details in Courting Censorship at 259-63. Here, the general point should be enough: The First Amendments words, unlike the coercion standard, offer some valuable first steps for sorting out the difference between unconstitutional censorship and lawful communication.

What does all of this mean in practice? A one-off unthreatening conversation with an editor (for example, about national security) is not barred by the First Amendment, but a policy of any sort to suppress lawful speechwhether because it is false or offensiveis forbidden. The government cannot make itself the arbiter of truth or offensiveness, and it cannot adopt a policy to suppress what is lawful.

The bar against a policy reducing any lawful speech is especially clear from the First Amendment's pre-administrative assumption that only Congress would be making laws restricting speech. From that perspective, speech had the protection of the representative process; it could be assaulted only if legislators from across the country publicly passed a law suppressing speech. The First Amendment, in short, assumed that the executive could not adopt any policy against lawful speech.

Nowadays, of course, administrative and sub-administrative mechanisms enable the executive to adopt policies against speech. But that is all the more reason to carry forward the First Amendment's assumption that only unlawful speech would be at risk from the executive. It therefore would be entirely appropriate, even necessary, for the injunction in Murthy v. Missouri to bar the executive from making or carrying out any policy reducing lawful speech.

As things stand, the coercion standard fails to draw a plausible line. It seems to permit all that is not coercive, and because this seems so lax as to invite censorship, the coercion standard ultimately requires judges to backtrack from coercion. Being unable to draw an accurate or even clear distinction, the coercion standard only confuses judges. They need a better guide for distinguishing between the government's unlawful censorship and its lawful persuasion. So, even just as a practical matter, the First Amendment's text deserves the Justices' attention.

Rights are limitations on power, not tradable commodities. This is especially clear in the First Amendment because of its phrasing: "Congress shall make no law . . ." Being a law empowering and limiting governmenta law made by the peoplethe Constitution cannot be escaped with any amount of lesser consent, whether from individuals, companies, or states.

Prof. Somin urges that the freedom of speech is unabridged as long as an individual consentsand thus as long as the government does not use coercion. He thereby treats the freedom as a matter of personal discretion, which an individual can relinquish as he pleases. In the founding era, however, the freedom of speech was understood (at least in theory) as a natural rightmeaning not an individual's natural physical freedom or discretion, but his non-injurious freedom of speech. See Philip Hamburger, Natural Rights, Natural Law, and American Constitutions 908-09. The point is not to insist on a belief in natural rights, but merely to observe that the freedom of speech was understood as a sphere of freedom or discretion that was the same for all individuals and their associations. By guaranteeing it against government abridgment, the First Amendment barred government from reducing that sphere of that freedom. And by imposing this barrier as a legal limit on government, the amendment prevented it from being adjusted by any consent less than that of the people in the amendment process.

At the same time, consent can have a role within the First Amendment. Most constitutional rights let government do some things with consent that it otherwise could not and yet also limit what consent can accomplish. The government, for example, can search your house with your consent because that is a reasonable search, not because your consent can give the government a power that the Fourth Amendment denies to it.

Bringing the question back to the freedom of speech, the First Amendment leaves room for government to act with consent, but only as long as the consensual restrictions do not abridge the freedom of speech. When does that happen? The word abridging is very informative:

When a law directly constrains speech, it can be difficult to sort out whether it violates the First Amendment, for this amendment does not specify the difference between a law that abridges the freedom of speech and one that does not. But when a condition restricts speech, the inquiry can be easier, for if the condition confines speech more severely than the government could do directly, then the condition is abridging the freedom of speech.

Philip Hamburger, Purchasing Submission 169 (Harvard 2021). The government cannot use consent to impose restrictions it could not impose directly because that would abridge the freedom of speech.

This argument obviously relies on direct abridgments as a baseline for determining what is an abridgment done by consent. This baseline makes sense because direct regulation is the archetypical mode of violating rights, and the First Amendment comes close to expressly recognizing this when it declares: "Congress shall make no law . . ."

One way or another, what is unconstitutional when done directly establishes an apt baseline for measuring when consensual limits abridge the freedom of speech. It follows the text, it offers clarity, and it helps to avoid the evasion that occurs when the government turns to consensual arrangements to do what would be unconstitutional if done directly.

(Incidentally, a brief note on vocabularyin particular, the word persuasion. It surely is a mistake to contrast unconstitutional abridging, let alone unconstitutional coercion, with constitutional persuasion. I must admit that I've been guilty of casually using the word persuasion in this manner. But that usage misleadingly suggests that consensual restrictions on speech are generally constitutional. In fact, they are not constitutional if they go beyond what could be directly imposed and thus abridge the freedom of speech.)

The full implications of this analysis are complex and are surveyed in Purchasing Submission. Suffice it to say that the role of consent within the freedom of speech is important but limited. When a consensual restriction on speech goes beyond what would be constitutional if done directly, it abridges the freedom of speech.

The inability of consent to cure speech restrictions beyond what could have been imposed directly is confirmed by the public interest in speech. The First Amendment protects speech not merely because speech is valuable to the speaker, but more broadly because it has value for the whole of our society, if not the world.

Just one individual's speech can reshape our understanding of government (James Harrington) or even of the universe (Galileo). Today, individual scientists can illuminate our health and the dangers to it from government policy (Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff). All such individuals have been censored at high cost not just for them, but for the rest of us, who benefit from learning the truth, even if officialdom condemns it as error, heresy, or misinformation.

We learn from the truth, even from untruths, and most commonly from the partial truths that constitute most speechas John Stuart Mill explained in his On Liberty. So, all censorship harms the public, not just the censored individual.

This matters for consent. Even if a censored individual consents to having his speech suppressed, that does not cure the harm, because the damage from censorship is to all of us, not merely the censored individual. As argued by Prof. Daniel Farber, free speech, with its informational benefits, is not just a private right but also a public good. This point is developed more broadly by my colleague Prof. Thomas Merrill.

It has been seen that under the First Amendment, if a restriction cannot be imposed directly, such a restriction should not be considered justified by consent. And this makes sense when one considers the public interest in each individual's freedom of speech. The First Amendment is a limit on government power for the benefit of all of us, and the government therefore shouldn't be able to whittle it away by making "a separate peace with those who can be induced to consent. Private deals allow the government to buy off political opposition." Hamburger, Purchasing Submission 105.

Prof. Somin applies his ideas about coercion and consent to justify the government's suppression of speech on the social media platforms. This seems odd because the government pressures and cooperates with the platforms to suppress the speech of third parties, who aren't consulted by the government, and who don't consent. One might have thought that even under his coercion theory, Prof. Somin would view this nonconsensual censorship as unconstitutional.

But no. He seems to think that when government gets the plaforms' consent, it has avoided coercion and so has acted constitutionally.

In the archetypical instance of "jawboning," a government official calls up a newspaper editor to ask him to delay or stifle a news story that would harm the national interest. In other words, government seeks the consent of the speaker.

Yet that is precisely what does not happen in the current censorship regime. Instead, government officials or their private cutouts urge the platforms to suppress the speech posted by members of the public. In some instances, the platforms genuinely consent; in other instances, they relent under pressure. But even when the platforms consent without pressure, the censored individuals have not consentedindeed, they often are not even informed that they are being censored.

You might protest, as does Prof. Somin, that when the government persuades Reason not to let him post on this website, the government does not thereby violate his First Amendment rights. In his view, "that's no different" from when the government persuades the platforms to suppress Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya's posts. Really, no different? Prof. Somin publishes here as a member of the blog, who has been personally invited to publish under its masthead. Whereas newspapers publish their choice of submitted editorials, blogs publish anything a member of the blog posts, but either way, nothing gets published or posted except what has been chosen by the newspaper or blog through its selection of an editorial or blogger. Thus, to the extent an editorial or post appears in the newspaper or blog, it becomes the speech of the newspaper or blog.

In contrast, any individual can post on the platforms, at least until his posts are removed, and that is the individuals' speech, not the platforms' speech. Not even the platforms claim otherwise. (Rather than claim speech rights in what their users post, the platforms merely assert that they have editorial discretiona speech right in expressively discriminating against their users.) So when the government consensually gets a platform to remove posts, it is suppressing the speech of third parties without their consent.

You might respond that users agree to the platforms' terms of service. But the government has often pushed the platforms to suppress speech that did not violate those terms. In any case, the private consent to the terms of service cannot give government a power that the First Amendment denies to it.

The lack of consent from the individuals who speak on the platforms should be a sobering problem for Prof. Somin's theory. His underlying principles of coercion and consent mean that the individual speakersfor example, the distinguished scientists Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriatyshould have been consulted by the government to get their consent to their suppression. But they were not asked for their consent, and they would never have given it.

A further difficulty is that Prof. Somin's coercion-consent dichotomy presents false alternatives. He takes his dichotomy so far as to question the "significant encouragement" test on the ground that "[i]f the private party gave the governmental actor such control voluntarily, that may be bad media ethics, but it is not a violation of freedom of speech."

Although Prof. Somin speaks of voluntary consent, he might have acknowledged that, in familiar legal doctrine, a wide range of pressures and influences less than coercion can vitiate consent.

Put another way, consent is the just the first stage of analysis in contract law. A party can consent, and yet a court can find that the consent was obviated by other considerations. To be sure, in the nineteenth century, the doctrine on duress spoke of a gun to the head and other compulsion. But that was a long time ago. Since then:

[T]he law has become profoundly sensitive to the complex pressuresincluding economic and informational imbalancesthat can deprive apparently consensual arrangement[s] of their voluntary character.

Although contract law historically paid little attention to such imbalances, notions of economic duress and informational disparities have gained much credence, even if not consistently, in the past half century. Similarly, medical treatment is not considered truly voluntary unless doctors disclose enough information to their patients for them to exercise informed consent. Researchers are required to secure informed consent from their human subjects, and payments to impecunious volunteers, even payments as low as $20, prompt soul searching as to whether the resulting economic pressure renders their participation nonconsensual. Most recently, pressures less than coercion have come to the fore in sexual relations. In the context of employment or education, a range of economic and peer pressures for sex or for conformity to sexual stereotypes can be legally significant, and a wide variety of words can create a hostile work environment.

Admittedly, some of these developments can go too far. . . . But the underlying insightthat economic and personal pressures can compromise consentis undeniable.

Hamburger, Purchasing Submission 193. In short, it would be very odd for an analysis of the freedom of speech "to ignore the past century of expanding legal sensitivity to the range of pressures less than coercion. When the law recognizes such threats to consent across the legal landscape, it does not make sense to pretend that such questions do not arise" under the First Amendment. Id.

It's also important to recognize the secrecy and scale of the current censorship regime. Murthy v. Missouri is not about an individual officer calling up a newspaper editor to chat about one of the paper's stories. It is a massive covert operation against the American people.

This was confirmed just a day after the argument in Murthy v. Missouri in further revelations from Elon Musk:

This is coming from multiple parts of the government. From the State Department, the FBI, Homeland Security, from really many, many parts of the government. It wasn't just one arm of the government.

He explained that:

[T]here's a little-known agency in the state department called the Global Engagement Center, which most people have never heard of, but they might have been the single worst offender because they demanded the suspension of over 250,000 accounts which I think all Twitter largely complied with. . . .

The suspension demands were so broad that they accidentally demanded a suspension of a journalist on CNN and an elected Canadian politician. It was just an incredibly broad swath.

As for the secrecy, "'There was this FBI portal that auto-deleted all communications after two weeks, so we actually don't know what was said there.'"

It is therefore utterly disproportionate, even unreal, to compare the current censorship to an old-style phone conversation between an official and a newspaper editor. As I explain in Courting Censorship at 259-63, that sort of conversation does not necessarily violate the First Amendment. In contrast, a policy to use the platforms to suppress points of views critical of government policy across vast numbers of postsindeed, without the consent of the speakersis grossly unconstitutional, regardless of whether the government coerced or cooperated with the platforms.

A coercion standard would be the last straw for the freedom of speech. It already is at much greater risk than in the past because of the rise of administrative and especially sub-administrative power (the sort of power that operates below the level of notice-and-comment rules and ALJs). With such power, government can engage in wholesale suppression:

Administrative and especially sub-administrative power have facilitated the substitution of wholesale suppression for the old retail suppression. Traditionally, the federal government could not actually suppress speech, but could only punish the speaker. And it had to charge him with seditious libel or some other offense and prove to a judge and jury that his words violated the law. This was retail adjudication, and it was essential for the protection of speech and other rights.

Nowadays, however, . . . government can press for administrative licensing of speech or, worse, can use informal mechanisms such as sub-administrative threats, raised eyebrows, and offers of coordination to get the dominant Platforms to suppress their users' speech. Although the government doesn't have to prove anything against anyone, it can make vast amounts of speech just disappear. In such ways, retail punishment of individuals through seditious libel prosecutions has been abandoned for wholesale suppression of opinion. . . .

In shifting from retail prosecutions to wholesale suppression, the government places the onus of going to court on the censored. Whereas the censored once merely had to defend themselves when prosecuted, they now need to go to court to stop the censorship. . . .

[T]he government's administrative and sub-administrative mechanisms flip around the burdens of proof and persuasion. Whereas government once had to prove the guilt of each of us before we could be punished for our speech, now each of us has to prove that the government unconstitutionally censored us and that the court should grant a remedyjust in order to make our words visible.

Courting Censorship 218-19.This wholesale suppression and its shift in burdens is bad enough, but there is more.

The freedom of speech is becoming nearly a right without a remedy. Qualified immunity makes it difficult to get damages for past censorship. The limits on injunctions mean it isn't easy to get a remedy against the breadth of future censorship. And, of course, neither damages nor injunctions are prompt and effective against secret censorshipas evident from the fact that it took half a decade to get the first injunction against the current suppression.

On top of all of this, if coercion becomes the standard for speech violations, there would be no remedy at all against the host of censorship mechanisms that are not overtly coercive. One would have thought that Supreme Court doctrine should stop censorship in its tracks. Instead, as detailed in Courting Censorship, doctrine is becoming almost an instruction manual for how to get away with it.

Conclusion

The coercion-consent measure of free speech is utterly mistaken. It is wrong about coercion, it is wrong about consent, and it practically invites government censorship. So, if the Supreme Court takes such an approach in Murthy v. Missouri, the case will stand out as one of the most abysmal First Amendment decisions in the nation's history.

In Murthy, two states and five individual plaintiffs urged the Supreme Court to reject the coercion standard and recognize that the First Amendment "capaciously protects the freedom of speech from any 'abridging' (i.e., diminishing) of that freedom." Respondents' Brief 48. The Court should heed this argument and fall back upon the First Amendment. If necessary, it should invite further briefing and argument on this point. Neither the Court nor the country can afford any mistake about it.

The Court should also invite briefing and argument from the censored individuals, Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty, and Jill Hines and Jim Hoft. Remarkably, in both Murthy v. Missouri and NetChoice v. Paxtonthe two cases that may determine the fate of free speech in Americathe censored individuals had no opportunity to argue for themselves. None. The individuals who have been suppressed, who have the most intense First Amendment interest, should have a voice at the Court.

Continued here:
Abridging, Not Coercing, Is The First Amendment's Yardstick for Speech Violations - Reason

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Judge hears Trump’s First Amendment challenge to Georgia charges: Watch live – Yahoo Singapore News

Posted: at 2:47 am

The judge overseeing former President Trumps Georgia election interference case is forging ahead with a series of pretrial motions after weeks of delay caused by scandal in the Fulton County prosecuting office.

Judge Scott McAfee will hear arguments Thursday from Trumps counsel, who is expected to assert the charges in the Georgia election case must be dismissed under the First Amendment because the allegations target Trumps core political speech.

The judge is also expected hear arguments on two pretrial motions from co-defendant David Shafer, which assert the former Georgia Republican Party chair acted legally when declaring himself a duly elected state elector and signing documents purporting Trump won the states 2020 presidential election.

The arguments are expected to begin at 10 a.m. EDT.

Watch the live video above.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

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Judge hears Trump's First Amendment challenge to Georgia charges: Watch live - Yahoo Singapore News

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Trump’s attorney says election inference case should be thrown out over 1st Amendment protections – Yahoo! Voices

Posted: at 2:47 am

An attorney for former President Donald Trump was back in court again Thursday arguing that the former presidents criminal charges should be thrown out.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee did not make a ruling yet, but he did hear compelling arguments from both sides.

This was also the first hearing since McAfee ruled that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis could remain on this case despite her romantic relationship with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade.

Trumps attorney Steve Sadow argued that the case should be dismissed because the comments he made are protected by the First Amendment.

I dont think theres any question that says statements, comment, speech, expressive conduct that deals with campaigning or elections has always been found to be at the zenith of protected speech, Sadow said. When you look at the allegations against President Trump, all of the allegations all of the allegations involved expressive conduct or speech.

Judge sets new hearing date in 2020 Georgia election interference case – 11Alive.com WXIA

Posted: at 2:47 am

Attorneys representing Former President Donald Trump and others are due in court Thursday morning.

FULTON COUNTY, Ga. In a Monday afternoon order, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee set a new hearing date in the 2020 election interference case.

Attorneys representing former president Donald Trump and former Georgia Republican Party chairman David Shafer are due back in court on Thursday for a hearing to address three motions, according to the judge's order.

An explanation of each of the motions at issue is below:

Former president Trump's attorney, Steve Sadow, has asked the court to dismiss the indictment against Trump. He argues that Trump's alleged criminal conduct was actually political speech protected by the First Amendment.

"This Court should hold that the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech, when applied to the core political speech and expressive conduct alleged in the indictment against a President of the United States, demands a pretrial remedy, and that remedy is dismissal of the indictment," Sadow wrote in a December motion.

In a January court filing, prosecutors responded to claims of First Amendment protection, arguing that "the Defendants' crimes, as alleged in the indictment, are not protected political speech and are not shielded from prosecution by the First Amendment."

Prosecutors have alleged that Shafer played a role in advancing a false slate of presidential electors in an attempt to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election.

However, Shafer's legal team has asked the court to dismiss the charges against him, arguing that "the State seeks to punish as criminal conduct by Mr. Shafer which was lawful at the time," according to a February court filing.

"In nearly all of the charged conduct, Mr. Shafer was attempting to comply with the advice of legal counsel and the express requirements of the former federal Electoral Count Act," the motion continued.

In another February motion, Shafer's legal team asked the judge to strike from the indictment the following phrases:

Shafer's attorneys argued that prosecutors, by using that language, reached conclusions that were actually "questions for the Court or for the jury at trial."

"Mr. Shafer disputes the prosecution's prejudicial and conclusory allegations relating to Presidential Electors," the motion continued.

Additionally, the legal team asked the court to dismiss three counts against Shafer related to the 'false' elector plot.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and other prosecutors responded to Shafer's motion with a court filing of their own, disputing his claims.

"The state struggles to understand the rationale behind the Defendant's motion, and it is not supported by any authority," the prosecutors wrote.

Judge McAfee will hear arguments over all the above issues in court on Thursday morning.

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Judge sets new hearing date in 2020 Georgia election interference case - 11Alive.com WXIA

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Judge hears Trump’s First Amendment challenge to Georgia charges: Watch live – AOL

Posted: at 2:47 am

The arguments are expected to begin at 10 a.m. EDT.

Watch the live video above.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

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Judge hears Trump's First Amendment challenge to Georgia charges: Watch live - AOL

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Biden Wants To Avoid a First Amendment Showdown Over WikiLeaks – Reason

Posted: March 22, 2024 at 9:15 am

Federal prosecutors are pursuing a deal to allow WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to avoid espionage charges and instead plead guilty to the misdemeanor of mishandling classified data. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the talks between U.S. authorities and Assange's lawyers on Wednesday. The independent outlet Consortium News then confirmed that it had learned the same details "off the record" several months ago.

Assange has been detained in Britain for five years awaiting extradition, and the Journal reported that he "would likely be free to leave prison shortly after any deal was concluded" due to time served.

Although it's not a done deal, the proposal is good news for the First Amendment, because it avoids setting a precedent that allows the U.S. government to treat journalists as spies.

Attorney General Merrick Garland still has to sign off on any deal, according to the Journal. And Assange's brother Gabriel Shipton told Consortium News that Assange is dead-set against signing a deal that would require him to come to the United States, due to worries that the U.S. government could change the terms at the last minute.

After the news broke, Assange's lawyer Barry J. Pollack stated, "We have been given no indication that the Department of Justice intends to resolve the case." Pollack didn't deny that negotiations were happening, and accusing the other side of being unserious could be a negotiating tactic.

But both sides have a strong incentive to avoid a trial. In addition to saving Assange from significant jail time, a plea deal could allow the Biden administration to wriggle out of a self-inflicted political conundrum.

WikiLeaks became a thorn in the U.S. government's side in the early 2010s when it published classified data provided by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, including adatabase ofU.S. diplomatic cables and a video of a U.S. Army helicopter gunning down a news crewin Iraq.

The Obama administration prosecuted Manning but decided not to prosecute Assange because of the "New York Times problem." Even though WikiLeaks is not a traditional newspaper, its activities are legally not so different from The New York Times and other news organizations, which often publish stories based on leaked classified information.

Indeed, Assange partnered with the Times,The Guardian, and other international outlets for the "Cablegate" leaks. When the Trump administration finally decided to prosecute Assange for espionage in 2019, the Times editorial board called the case a weapon "aimed straight at the heart of the First Amendment."

Because of Assange's case, a bipartisan group in Congress is pushing for a law to overhaul the Espionage Act completely.

With a misdemeanor plea deal, prosecutors could avoid a fight over the Espionage Act and the First Amendment, without looking like the Biden administration backed down. As the Journal put it, putting Assange on trial "would throw a political hot potato into the lap of the Biden administration."

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Biden Wants To Avoid a First Amendment Showdown Over WikiLeaks - Reason

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West Texas drag show becomes a First Amendment battleground – The Texas Tribune

Posted: at 9:15 am

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West Texas A&M University students Bear Bright and Marcus Stovall held their breath for months.

Yes, university President Walter Wendler canceled last years on-campus drag show. But as a lawsuit accusing Wendler of violating students First Amendment rights wended through the courts, Bright and Stovall booked a student center banquet hall, secured insurance and organized nearly a dozen performers for the Dont Be a Drag performance slated for Friday night.

The two students at the university in Canyon, about 20 miles south of Amarillo, didnt approach the new event as a salvo in the larger battle over freedom of expression in America that is still pending before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. To them, it was about producing a joyful student performance celebrating queer identities the kind of show that happens every night without controversy in other parts of Texas.

Still, they knew that any time, Wendler could block the show from happening on campus. But they also thought that Wendlers reasoning for the previous cancellation exemplified a public official stifling expression because he disagrees with the content and was the kind of clear-cut censorship the federal court system would prevent from happening again.

But last week, the U.S. Supreme Court dashed those hopes. The high court refused, at least for now, to wade into the case and its free speech debate. On Monday, Wendler did exactly what Bright and Stovall feared: He again forbade a drag show from being performed on campus.

It was very discouraging and depressing at first, Bright said.

The Supreme Court only declined to block Wendler from canceling another drag show while a lawsuit over the previous cancellation plays out at the appellate level. Justices were not considering the underlying legal arguments about whether Wendler abused his authority to squash the performance on the basis of his disapproval of the students viewpoints. Those questions are still before the 5th Circuit court, which has also declined to issue an injunction against Wendler until it hears arguments in the case in April.

The West Texas lawsuit comes a year following Republican state lawmakers attempt to classify all drag shows as obscene. But after a video of a male GOP legislator wearing a dress for a school theater project surfaced, state leaders scrapped that version of a bill and eventually passed a law that prohibits certain drag performances in front of children. But even that watered-down version of Senate Bill 12 has been deemed unconstitutionally overbroad and vague. An appeal of that decision is also before the 5th Circuit.

SB 12 came on the heels of an anti-drag panic whipped up by a small but influential cadre of activists and extremist groups who routinely characterized all drag as inherently and nefariously sexual, regardless of the content or audience. Such claims were then used to justify harassment of the LGBTQ+ community, often under the guise of protecting children.

It's part of the national mentality, said Claudia Stravato, a part time state and local government faculty member at West Texas A&M. We kind of get morally hysterical in this country every few years.

The potential constitutional showdowns over drag shows also come in an era when Texas officials have relied on new state laws, the attorney generals office and a newly conservative Supreme Court to help redraw the legal boundaries on everything from abortion and illegal immigration to what kinds of health care transgender children can access.

And as a legal limbo persists, LGBTQ+ residents like Bright and Stovall acutely feel politically and socially targeted in a part of the state where cultural acceptance of queer people already lags behind the states big cities.

It kind of feels like that LGBTQ+ and queer people aren't welcome anywhere near here, Bright said Thursday, still recovering from Wendlers disorienting cancellation earlier this week. Just because we're gay or bi or trans we're just not allowed to exist in this area.

Myss Myka is one of the most prominent drag queens in the Texas Panhandle with a performance career thats spanned nearly a decade. Based in Amarillo, shes mentored a number of drag artists over the years, including West Texas A&M students.

She was all set to host the on-campus show Friday, before Wendler canceled it.

The need for student-led drag shows, she said, is to create a sense of community for young people who are questioning their place in the world and trying to find connections in it.

We tell people that, We're here for you, well answer any questions that you have and, most importantly, we want you to be able to find your own path and find people who you can share your struggles with, Myka said.

Throughout the years, Myka has noticed the queer-friendly community in Amarillo grow. With a population of more than 200,000 Amarillo is by far the largest city in the Panhandle. But it anchors a largely rural region that remains a staunchly conservative area that is several hours away from any of Texas sprawling metro areas where drag shows are routine and LGBTQ+ people hold public office.

Myka said the strength and influence of the regions religious groups and extremist organizations fuels safety concerns every time she takes the stage.

Stovall, who had planned to perform on Friday dressed in an homage to English novelist Clive Barkers character known as Pinhead in the movie Hellraiser, shares those safety concerns living in Canyon south of Amarillo.

If I tried to hang up a pride flag in my window, Id probably get a rock through it within an hour, Stovall said.

After last years drag show was canceled, organizers eventually found a venue off-campus where they staged a make-up performance. Myka hosted that show. With Fridays showcase canceled, shes now focusing on emotionally supporting performers as they figure out what to do next.

As queens, we're always kind of prepared for any kind of situation we're in, she said.

Since taking the helm of West Texas A&M in 2016, Wendler, who is known for his outspoken Christian beliefs, has presented himself as the answer to what conservative lawmakers and activists see as a proliferation of liberal agendas and silencing of conservative views in higher education.

When he banned student-led drag shows on the universitys campus last year, he said it was because the performances degrade women.

No one should claim a right to contribute to womens suffering via a slapstick sideshow that erodes the worth of women, he said at the time.

He cited those same reasons in another all-campus email on Monday, canceling the second show. He also pointed to the new state law, SB 12, as a reason for denying the students permit. Originally billed as legislation that would prevent children from seeing drag shows, lawmakers eventually landed on language that doesnt directly reference people dressing as the opposite gender. Instead, the legislation prohibits any performers from dancing suggestively or wearing certain prosthetics in front of children.

A federal judge in Houston blocked the state from enforcing the law and issued a 56-page ruling concluding that Texas new law was so vague that cheerleading and dancing could be construed to be violations.

"Drag shows express a litany of emotions and purposes, from humor and pure entertainment to social commentary on gender roles," the ruling reads. "There is no doubt that at the bare minimum these performances are meant to be a form of art that is meant to entertain, alone this would warrant some level of First Amendment protection."

Organizers of the drag show said it was disingenuous for Wendler to cite SB 12 as a reason to shut down the performances since the law currently cant be enforced.

That just really miffed me, said Bright.

When he and Stovall sought court relief from Wendlers previous drag ban, their case came before U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, the sole sitting judge in the Amarillo federal court district and an outspoken opponent of LGBTQ+ rights. Former President Donald Trump appointed Kacsmaryk to the bench in 2019. Before that, the judge was deputy counsel for the First Liberty Institute, a deeply conservative religious liberty law firm.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and private litigants frequently file their most contentious lawsuits in Kacsmaryks court. And on everything from immigration and abortion drugs to teens access to confidential contraception, they largely achieved their desired outcome.

Unlike the Houston judge who blocked Texas so-called drag show ban, Kacsmaruk ruled that not all drag shows could be considered expressive conduct and he sided with Wendler.

Now both cases, one against SB 12 and one against Wendler, are before the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Oral arguments in the students case are slated for April.

Peter Steffensen, a law fellow with the First Amendment Clinic at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law, said the appellate court now has to grapple with a situation in which two lower courts came to different conclusions on the same subject matter.

It's a real concern about whether or not the court will impose some sort of rule that restricts the free expression of ideas and performance art in order to, as they say, protect minors, Steffenson said. His law clinic filed a brief in support of the students.

Across the country, other federal courts are fielding similar questions. In November, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reinstate a Florida law that penalizes businesses for allowing children to view drag shows until a lower court fully considers the case.

Wendler is not the only Panhandle official to effectively block a drag show.

The Amarillo Area Transgender Advocacy Groups Easter event in a Canyon park last year featured drag performers, including Myka. One protester showed up wearing military fatigues and flashing the Nazi salute. But organizers positioned food trucks in a way that blocked him from most attendees sight.

Off-duty police officers hired as security told AATAG board president Sam Burnett, who is transgender, that they had no issues, found the organization easy to work with and offered to serve as security again this year.

But when AATAG filed for a permit for this years event, Canyon officials denied them, saying police officers last year witnessed public safety issues and lewd behavior.

The groups permit was denied due to issues at their 2023 event. This decision was made in an effort to safeguard the use of Canyons public spaces and all of those who visit them, Megan Nelson, communications director for the city told The Texas Tribune in a statement.

City officials declined to provide details about the alleged issues, but said the groups application fee had been returned.

If police officers did witness something inappropriate at the 2023 event, Why was it not addressed then? Why was it not addressed for an entire year? Burnett wondered.

Burnett said city officials cited the states obscenity law in denying this years application. But that doesnt make sense to him.

This is no different than women who are competing in a pageant, Burnett said of drag shows. It is a performance of art. And so why should any performance of art be hidden or not accessed?

Burnett and other Panhandle residents said the political environment has become increasingly hostile to LGBTQ+ residents, mirroring much of the rhetoric lawmakers in Austin have adopted to push legislation attempting to reshape the lives of queer Texans.

During the 2023 legislative session, Republican lawmakers successfully barred transgender university athletes from participating on sports teams that aligned their gender and banned adolescents from accessing gender-transitioning care like puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

The author of that health care ban for trans kids was state Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, who announced Thursday that he will challenge incumbent Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, a fellow Republican, for the leadership position. Top GOP leaders have attacked Phelan as insufficiently conservative as they attempt to push the Legislature further rightward.

But there have been local political battles, too, Burnett said. His group first hosted an LGBTQ+-friendly Easter event in 2022 after Canyon Independent School District was pressured to remove a suicide prevention program that mentioned LGBTQ+ people.

There is a curriculum that is being used as a teen suicide prevention curriculum that features a transgender individual and is, in our belief, therefore promoting transgenderism to high school students, Trinity Fellowship Church Senior Pastor Jimmy Witcher said during a Sunday service in February 2022.

He added the program was supported by pop star Lady Gaga, so that kinda tells you everything you need to know about it.

Canyon ISD did not respond to the Tribunes questions, but a page on the districts website that provides information about several hot-button issues titled Just the Facts says that the the Board of Trustees adopted Hope Squad a different curriculum as the suicide prevention program.

During the 2023 school board elections, a major issue among candidates and voters was how or whether schools should support LGBTQ+ students. An informal hotline Burnetts group set up from LGBTQ+ rang nonstop during that election cycle.

We get so many phone calls at all hours of the day, Burnett said. We're not a suicide hotline, but at the same time I'm not going to let somebody not call and at least have somebody to talk to.

John Hintz was a 22-year-old gay man when he moved to Amarillo. He actually found support and understanding at his church, a member of whats called the Open and Affirming Congregations of the Texas Panhandle.

Hintz said that the network's approach to LGBTQ+ people is vital at a time when political and social rhetoric especially toward transgender people can be so hostile.

Particularly when you think about young people, knowing that they have people out here, that there are people that will support them and believe them, Hintz said.

And, Hintz notes, not everyone in the Amarillo area takes issue with transgender people or drag shows. He said many have reached out with words of support and comfort.

For young residents like Bright and Stovall, the events over the last few years have made it clear that the mere existence of queerness makes some people upset.

They, royally, would rather have us just hide away and pretend that were all straight Christians in this area, Bright said.

As of Thursday, the students were planning to reschedule the canceled show, which will require some nimble planning to secure a new, off-campus venue and find a date that works for the other drag artists.

And with a potentially highly consequential court hearing scheduled for their lawsuit on April 15, theyre back to holding their breaths.

This story was supported by the Trans Journalists Association.

Disclosure: Southern Methodist University and West Texas A&M University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

We cant wait to welcome you to downtown Austin Sept. 5-7 for the 2024 Texas Tribune Festival! Join us at Texas breakout politics and policy event as we dig into the 2024 elections, state and national politics, the state of democracy, and so much more. When tickets go on sale this spring, Tribune members will save big. Donate to join or renew today.

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Category Archives: First Amendment

Trump’s team cites First Amendment in contesting election interference charges – Southernminn.com

Trump’s team cites First Amendment in contesting charges in Georgia election interference case – messenger-inquirer

OPINION: The possible TikTok ban is an infringement on our First Amendment rights – The Suffolk Journal

Abridging, Not Coercing, Is The First Amendment’s Yardstick for Speech Violations – Reason

Judge hears Trump’s First Amendment challenge to Georgia charges: Watch live – Yahoo Singapore News

Trump’s attorney says election inference case should be thrown out over 1st Amendment protections – Yahoo! Voices

Judge sets new hearing date in 2020 Georgia election interference case – 11Alive.com WXIA

Judge hears Trump’s First Amendment challenge to Georgia charges: Watch live – AOL

Biden Wants To Avoid a First Amendment Showdown Over WikiLeaks – Reason

West Texas drag show becomes a First Amendment battleground – The Texas Tribune

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